“Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine,” he told an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey. He said the United States was giving away Jerusalem as if it were an American city.

“It crosses all the red lines,” he said.

Abbas said it was unacceptable for the United States to have a role in the Middle East peace process because it was biased in favor of Israel.

Muslim nations must press the world to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, Turkey said on Wednesday as it opened the emergency summit.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on world powers to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine on Wednesday and said the United States should reverse a decision recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.

Addressing a summit of Muslim leaders in Istanbul, Erdogan described Washington’s decision last week as a reward for Israeli “terror acts” and said the city was a red line for Muslims.

The meeting of leaders and ministers from more than 50 Muslim countries takes place a week after US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem, which triggered widespread protests in the Middle East and Islamic world.

“Firstly the Palestinian state must be recognized by all other countries. We must all strive together for this,” Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“We must encourage other countries to recognize the Palestinian state on the basis of its 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam’s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades.

Turkey has said Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would plunge the world “into a fire with no end,” and called an emergency summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to urge Washington to change course.

Cavusoglu said this week Turkey would not call for sanctions in response to the US move, but would appeal for all countries that have not formally recognized Palestine as a state to do so, and to issue a strong rejection of the US decision.

He said the summit would declare East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and call for Israel to withdraw from territories it occupied in a 1967 Middle East war. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in that war and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will address the summit, which will also be attended by leaders including Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Bashir over his alleged role in war crimes including genocide in Sudan’s Darfur province, but Turkey is not a member of the court and not obliged to implement the warrants.

The Trump administration says it remains committed to reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians and its decision does not affect Jerusalem’s future borders or status.

It says any credible future peace deal will place the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and ditching old policies is needed to revive a peace process frozen since 2014.

]]>http://kristinelmingblog.net/abbas-to-muslim-summit-us-jerusalem-decision-greatest-crime/feed/0Israeli Minister Katz: Saudi Arabia should take lead role in peace processhttp://kristinelmingblog.net/israeli-minister-katz-saudi-arabia-should-take-lead-role-in-peace-process/
http://kristinelmingblog.net/israeli-minister-katz-saudi-arabia-should-take-lead-role-in-peace-process/#commentsWed, 13 Dec 2017 18:18:07 +0000Kristine L Minghttp://kristinelmingblog.net/israeli-minister-katz-saudi-arabia-should-take-lead-role-in-peace-process/
Saudi Arabia should offer the Palestinians its patronage in pushing forward the peace initiative that the US is currently working on, Transportation and Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in an interview published on Wednesday in Elaph, a London-based Arabic news website owned by a Saudi businessman.

“The Americans are putting together an initiative, but are not telling us what it includes; they say they will present it as an option, but not impose it. I think it is an opportunity,” Katz said.

“I suggest that Saudi Arabia, as the leader of the Arab world, take upon itself this initiative and go to the Palestinians and offer their patronage. They [the Palestinians] are too weak, they need someone to help them.”

“I call on [Saudi] King Salman to invite [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu for a visit, and for the crown prince to come for a visit here in Israel,” Katz said. “He should come, give patronage to and lead the peace initiative with the Palestinians and the US.”

The diplomatic process needs a jolt of creative ideas, he said.

“It it is important that we not come with the same thoughts and ideas,” he said. “Both sides need to understand that they must come with a willingness to give concessions here and there, and to be receptive. In a situation where the Saudis take the lead, I would be willing to go to negotiations.”

Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said the Saudis were well poised to take a leadership role because of the positive changes the kingdom is currently undergoing. Secondly, he said, Israel and Saudi Arabia agree “on everything” regarding the Iranian issue.

Protests erupt after Trump announces Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, December 7, 2017

He warned that Israel would send Lebanon “back to the stone age” if Iran builds a military industrial complex in the country able to manufacture precision rockets to be used against Israel, adding that Iran and Hezbollah were endangering Lebanon’s stability.

“This is a redline for us, whatever the price,” Katz said. “The more precise the Hezbollah missiles, the bigger the blow Lebanon will absorb.”

If there is another confrontation with Hezbollah, Israel will act not to return Hezbollah to the caves of south Lebanon, as one Saudi Arabian minister recently put it, but rather to the “stone age,” he said.

Regarding US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Katz said that Trump did no more than recognize reality, not change it.

He pointed out that the US president said that the borders of Jerusalem, as well as the status of the holy places, will be discussed in permanent-status negotiations.

Katz noted that even as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continuously ”bashes” Israel, “this does not prevent him from transferring through the Haifa Port 25% of his trade with Gulf countries.”

Every day dozens of trucks laden with goods from Turkey are unloaded at Haifa Port, and driven overland to the Allenby Bridge, and from there to the Gulf countries.

Likewise, he said, Turkish Airways is the busiest foreign carrier at Ben-Gurion Airport
Katz noted that Haifa Port also serves Jordan, and that 20% of the Hashemite Kingdom’s exports go through the port.

Jordan’s security and stability are important for Israel, but Jerusalem does not “like” King Abdullah’s verbal attacks on Israel, Katz said. Nevertheless, “we are aware of the difficulties that Jordan has to deal with,” and view “positively” the king’s efforts to deal with those challenges, he said.

Mr Macron condemned the manner in which the US had signed an international deal, then withdrawn from it.

“The US did sign the Paris Agreement. It’s extremely aggressive to decide on its own just to leave, and no way to push the others to renegotiate because one decided to leave the floor. I’m sorry to say that. It doesn’t fly.”

Image copyrightAFP/Getty Images

Image caption
About 50 senior ministers and prime ministers are attending the climate summit in Paris

President Macron aspires to lead the world in fulfilling the ambition of the Paris climate accord to hold global temperature rise to well under 2C .

He told CBS he was not willing to be accused by future generations of understanding the extent of the climate problem but doing too little to solve it.

Scientists are waiting now to see whether Tuesday’s summit of 50 senior ministers and prime ministers in Paris will achieve its aim of giving a boost to the current sluggish progress on cutting emissions.

There are potentially important announcements to be made on key financial issues:

Raising cash to give poor countries clean energy

Stopping development banks lending for new coal plants

Insisting that firms disclose any fossil fuel assets that might be devalued if governments clamp down on emissions.

There is also a potentially important announcement that could bind the shipping industry into climate targets – so far shipping has mostly evaded new rules on emissions because of the multinational nature of the industry.

In a significant move overnight, the oil giant Exxon announced it would assess the impact of climate change on its business.

Investors controlling about 62% of shares backed a proposal led by the New York state employees’ retirement fund calling for an annual assessment of the impact of technological change and climate policy on the company’s operations.

We won’t know until later whether the Paris meeting has really made progress with other new initiatives.

Image caption
Artwork: The moonlet may be about 200-300km from the main object

The American space agency’s New Horizons mission has struck gold again.

After its astonishing flyby of Pluto in 2015, scientists have just discovered that the probe’s next target is not one object but very likely two.

Earth-based observations suggest the small icy world, referred to simply as MU69, has a moonlet.

It seems New Horizons will now be making a two-for-the price-of-one flyby when it has its encounter on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, 2019.

The plan is for the spacecraft to pass the 30-40km-wide main object with a separation of just 3,500km, acquiring high-resolution pictures and other data.

This should reveal new information on the Kuiper Belt – the band of distant, frozen material that orbits far from the Sun. On flyby day, New Horizons and MU69 will be some 6.5 billion km (4.5 billion miles) from Earth.

“Besides being the farthest exploration in the history of humankind, this flyby is also going to the most primitive and pristine object ever explored,” said Prof Alan Stern, the principal investigator on New Horizons.

“We’ve really never been to anything like this. Of course, we’ve had lots of missions to comets that come from the Kuiper Belt, but they’ve come down into the inner Solar System where they’re processed, sometimes through hundreds of passages by the Sun, and they’re much smaller.

“If you remember Rosetta’s comet, 67P, which you saw so many pictures of from that great Esa/Nasa mission – this is a much larger target. It could fit about a thousand Rosetta comets inside itself.”

Image caption
Scientists have considered the possible shapes of the main MU69 object

His team described efforts earlier this year to tie down details about the target object’s precise movement and size using occultation.

This involves making observations of MU69 as it passes in front of a far-off star.

The tell-tale details are in the way the star blinks.

What emerged from the studies was fascinating. Not only does it seem there is an accompanying moonlet perhaps 200-300km from MU69, but the main target itself may also actually be a double act – either two individual units with a small gap between them; or just touching, something called a contact binary.

“This is very exciting. This is going to have a lot of surprises,” said New Horizons science team-member Dr Marc Buie, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

“We think this is probably a sign that the object itself was not a collision fragment; we think it was made this way. And so we really are going to see something that dates back to the birth of our Solar System.”

The flyby campaign begins in earnest in August, when the first course corrections that may be required for New Horizons will be made.

Observations will also take place to ensure there are no hazards in the vicinity of MU69 that might necessitate a wider pass.

The serious business of the flyby occurs over a nine-day period starting on 25 December, 2018.

New Horizons will focus on the Kuiper Belt object, hoping to return images that have a best resolution of about 30m per pixel.

The first of these should come back to Earth a couple of days after closest approach, which currently is timed to occur at 05:33 GMT on 1 January, 2019.

“Using New Horizons’ suite of seven instruments, we’ll be characterising the geology and morphology of the surface, looking to see whether there are any craters. We certainly expect to see craters,” explained team member Dr Anne Verbiscer from the University of Virginia.

“Possibly there could be grooves. We’ll also map the surface composition, searching for possible ices as we saw on Pluto.

“We also want to know what makes MU69 so dark and red. And we’ll be searching for satellites and rings and asking if that moon is really there; and are there any others?”

Director of the administration’s Arctic Researcher Program, Dr Jeremy Mathis, said the region did a great service to the planet – acting as a refrigerator.

“We’ve now left that refrigerator door open,” he added.

Dr Mathis was speaking at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans, where Noaa presented its annual summation of Arctic science.

Starving polar bear: The ‘face of climate change’?

This is the 12th report the administration has produced. And although it pointed to “a few anomalies” in a recent pattern of warming in the Arctic region, Dr Mathis said: “We can confirm, it will not stay in its reliably frozen state.”

“The thing I took that had the most resonance for me was we’re able to use some really long-term records to put the Arctic change into context – going back more than 1,500 years.

“What’s really alarming for me is that we’re seeing the Arctic is changing faster than at any rate in recorded history.”

The speed of change, Dr Mathis added, was making it very hard for people to adapt.

“Villages are being washed away, particularly in the North American Arctic – creating some of the first climate refugees,” he said.

“And pace of sea level rise is increasing because the Arctic is warming faster than we anticipated even a decade ago.”

The 2017 Arctic headlines

Media captionWhich cities might flood as the ice melts?

Warmer air: Average annual air temperature over land was the second highest after 2016, with a temperature 1.6C above average.

Warmer ocean: Sea surface temperatures in August 2017 were 4C above the average in the Barents and Chukchi seas. Surface waters of the Chukchi Sea have warmed by more than half a degree C per decade since 1982.

Plankton blooms: Springtime melting and retreating sea ice allows sunlight to reach the upper layers of the ocean, meaning more of these microscopic marine plants can photosynthesise.

Greener tundra: Overall vegetation, including plants getting bigger and leafier and shrubs and trees taking over. Grassland or tundra, increased across the Arctic in 2015 and 2016, as measured by satellite.

Ups and downs for snow: For the 11th year in the past 12, snow cover in the North American Arctic was below average, with communities experiencing earlier snow melt. The Eurasian part of the Arctic saw above average snow cover extent in 2017 – the first time that has happened since 2005.

Less melt on Greenland Ice Sheet: Melting began early on the Greenland Ice Sheet in 2017, but slowed during a cooler summer, resulting in below-average melting when compared with the previous nine years. Overall, the Greenland Ice Sheet, a major contributor to sea-level rise, continued to lose mass this past year, as it has since 2002 when measurements began.

Source: 2017 NOAA Arctic Report Card

Scientists say it is clear that human-induced climate change is contributing to making the Arctic a warmer and more dynamic place.

“When we look at the darkening of the Arctic,” said Dr Mathis, “reflective, icy surfaces are melting to reveal darker surfaces that absorb more of the Sun’s energy.

“So it probably only took a little bit of human-induced change to start the Arctic down this cascading pathway; a little bit of ice melting led to a little bit of warming, which led to more ice melting, which led to more warming.

“And now we’re seeing an acceleration – a runaway effect that may eventually be a catastrophic runaway effect starting to take hold in the Arctic.”

Oceanographer and retired US Navy Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, who was appointed by the Trump Administration as acting administrator of Noaa, was asked during the Arctic report presentation about the response of the White House to the findings.

Many scientists viewed President Trump’s recent decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement as clear evidence of his scepticism about human-induced climate change.

He said that the White House was “addressing and acknowledging it and factoring it in to their agenda”.

Dr Mathis added that information coming from this report was “beyond reproach”.

“They’re facts. Facts weighted in thousands and thousands of scientific measurements that have been validated and peer reviewed by a community of experts working in the area for decades.

]]>http://kristinelmingblog.net/warmer-arctic-is-the-new-normal/feed/0Saudi Arabia to allow public movie theaters from early 2018http://kristinelmingblog.net/saudi-arabia-to-allow-public-movie-theaters-from-early-2018/
http://kristinelmingblog.net/saudi-arabia-to-allow-public-movie-theaters-from-early-2018/#commentsTue, 12 Dec 2017 17:59:15 +0000Kristine L Minghttp://kristinelmingblog.net/saudi-arabia-to-allow-public-movie-theaters-from-early-2018/
DUBAI – Saudi Arabia said on Monday that public cinemas would be allowed in the conservative kingdom for the first time in over 35 years, and that the first ones were likely to open next March.

Cinemas were banned in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamists as Saudi society turned towards a restrictive form of the religion that discouraged public entertainment and many forms of mixing between men and women.

Under reforms led by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the government is easing many of those restrictions, and also plans to lift a ban on women driving next year. It says the economy, hit hard by low oil prices, will benefit from the growth of an entertainment industry.

“Opening cinemas will act as a catalyst for economic growth and diversification,” said Minister of Culture and Information Awwad bin Saleh Alawwad. “By developing the broader cultural sector we will create new employment and training opportunities, as well as enriching the Kingdom’s entertainment options.”

By 2030, Saudi Arabia is expected to open over 300 cinemas with more than 2,000 screens, a government statement said, predicting the cinema industry would contribute over 90 billion riyals ($24 billion) to the economy and create 30,000 permanent jobs by 2030.

]]>http://kristinelmingblog.net/saudi-arabia-to-allow-public-movie-theaters-from-early-2018/feed/0Palestinians won’t benefit from multilateral peace processhttp://kristinelmingblog.net/palestinians-wont-benefit-from-multilateral-peace-process/
http://kristinelmingblog.net/palestinians-wont-benefit-from-multilateral-peace-process/#commentsTue, 12 Dec 2017 17:59:12 +0000Kristine L Minghttp://kristinelmingblog.net/palestinians-wont-benefit-from-multilateral-peace-process/
Since US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and initiated a process to relocate the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the city, the Palestinians have made it clear that they will no longer work with an American-led peace process.

The question now is what Abbas plans to do if he no longer will cooperate with American-led peace efforts?

While the PA president has still not clearly stated what the Palestinian strategy will be moving forward, a number of senior Palestinian officials have suggested that the Palestinians want to work with a multilateral peace process that incorporates many international players.

Nabil Shaath, Abbas’s international affairs adviser, said on Sunday that establishing a multilateral framework for the peace process would better reflect the world’s realities.

“After the USSR fell, the US was ruling the world on its own. But today the world has changed. Russia, China and many states in Europe have become very powerful,” he said in a phone interview. “We believe the peace process should reflect this reality.”

A few days earlier, speaking to journalists and diplomats, Fatah Central Committee member Muhammad Shtayyeh expressed a similar sentiment.

“I hope that Europe can prepare the ground for an alternative political track,” he said. “I hope…that Europe, Russia [and] China…will really form a new track for reactivating peace in our region.”

However, while the Palestinians may push for a new multilateral track, it will unlikely become a viable alternative to American-led talks, as Israel will almost certainly refuse to work with it.

That is exactly what happened at the end of former US Barack Obama’s administration when France, in coordination with the Palestinians, tried to develop a multilateral track for the peace process.

At the end of the conference, the participating parties issued a declaration in support of a negotiated two-state solution, UN Security Council resolutions and Palestinian institution building. However, the declaration made no mention of a new multilateral framework to resolve the conflict.

The main issue was that Israel, which dominates most of the West Bank and a majority of the crossings in and out of Gaza, refused to work with the French efforts. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the conference in France as “rigged.”

Without Israel’s support, there was no hope that the French efforts would lead to a Palestinian state or any other settlement.

Israel has long backed a US-led peace process because of its strategic relationship with Washington.

Consecutive American administrations have supported Israel and assured it that it would take its security, economic and other interests into account in its peace-making efforts.

Thus, for Israel, it was an obvious decision not to take a risk in working with a new group of mediators as a part of the French efforts, who may not be as concerned with its interests as the US. It should be no surprise if Israel holds the same position on a future effort to establish a multilateral framework for the peace process.

]]>http://kristinelmingblog.net/palestinians-wont-benefit-from-multilateral-peace-process/feed/0PA Prime Minister: We have not been fully empowered to operate in Gazahttp://kristinelmingblog.net/pa-prime-minister-we-have-not-been-fully-empowered-to-operate-in-gaza/
http://kristinelmingblog.net/pa-prime-minister-we-have-not-been-fully-empowered-to-operate-in-gaza/#commentsTue, 12 Dec 2017 17:59:12 +0000Kristine L Minghttp://kristinelmingblog.net/pa-prime-minister-we-have-not-been-fully-empowered-to-operate-in-gaza/
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Tuesday said the PA had not been fully empowered to operate in the Gaza Strip, even though a deadline for Hamas to hand over responsibility for the territory to the PA passed on Sunday.

In mid-October, Fatah and Hamas signed a deal in Cairo to advance reconciliation efforts and restore the PA’s governing authority in Gaza, but have since struggled to implement the agreement. Hamas has controlled Gaza since ousting the Fatah-dominated PA in 2007 from the territory.

“[Hamdallah] affirmed that the government did not assume all of its powers and responsibilities and that the process of empowering the government did not happen in accordance with the [mid-October] agreement,” the official PA news site Wafa reported, alluding to the PA prime minister’s comments at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

In contrast to Hamdallah’s remarks, Hamas on Saturday asserted in a statement that the PA had “assumed all of its responsibilities in Gaza.”

Last week, Hamdallah visited Gaza for the second time in the past two and a half years, where he met with senior Hamas and Fatah officials.

In his comments on Tuesday, Hamdallah said that obstacles to restoring the PA’s authority in Gaza include Hamas stopping the PA from collecting taxes.

“He said…stopping tax collection…will have negative implications for the financial process and the government fulfilling its financial obligations including to” Hamas-appointed employees, the Wafa report stated.

According to the mid-October agreement, the PA is supposed to pay the salaries of Hamas-appointed employees in the Strip for three months once it has been enabled to operate there.

After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, it appointed some 40,000 employees, who have since worked in government institutions and bodies. The PA has never officially recognized them as legitimate employees.

On Tuesday, a majority of the Hamas-appointed employees participated in a strike in protest of the PA not paying their salaries at the beginning of December, the Hamas-linked al-Rai reported.

Pictures posted on social media showed some government offices were closed.

Earlier this week, Yaqoub al-Ghandour, the head of the Hamas-appointed employees union, slammed the PA for not paying the Hamas-appointed employees’ salaries, saying that they “are a red line that cannot be bartered or negotiated.”

Mr Milner’s Breakthrough Listen programme released a statement which read: “Researchers working on long-distance space transportation have previously suggested that a cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimise friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust.”

Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, who is part of the initiative, said: “‘Oumuamua’s presence within our Solar System affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects.”

He added: “Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target for Listen.”

Prof Andrew Coates, from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Dorking, who is not involved with Breakthrough Listen, told BBC Surrey radio: “I believe there is an experiment being done to actually listen to this object to see if there are any potential signs of life on it.

Image copyrightSPL

Image caption
The observations will be carried out using the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, US

“I think this is most unlikely because it’s left over from the beginning of that planetary system elsewhere. Much better ways of looking for life are actually missions like our ExoMars project, which is going to be going to Mars in 2020, drilling underneath the surface to look for signs of life. We’re building the camera system for that.”

He added: “But as this thing is passing through very quickly, why not have a listen just in case. But I think it’s most unlikely.”

Other researchers who have carried out observations of the asteroid with ground telescopes say that, apart from its shape, it closely resembles natural objects found in the outer parts of our Solar System.

It has a reddish colour, which is often indicative of organic compounds that have been irradiated by cosmic rays. Measurements suggest it has a dense structure and is comprised of rock and metal, but with little – if any – water-ice.

Although ‘Oumuamua formed around another star, scientists think it could have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our Solar System.

]]>http://kristinelmingblog.net/interstellar-asteroid-checked-for-alien-technology/feed/0Jupiter Great Red Spot has deep rootshttp://kristinelmingblog.net/jupiter-great-red-spot-has-deep-roots/
http://kristinelmingblog.net/jupiter-great-red-spot-has-deep-roots/#commentsTue, 12 Dec 2017 17:59:04 +0000Kristine L Minghttp://kristinelmingblog.net/jupiter-great-red-spot-has-deep-roots/Media captionA visualisation shows what it would be like to dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Scientists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter – the biggest storm in the solar system.

This spectacular anticyclone has been in existence for more than 150 years. It is wider than the Earth.

One of the big puzzles has concerned its roots and how deep they go.

Now, the American space agency’s Juno probe at Jupiter has an answer. The storm system extends down at least 350km (200 miles) into the atmosphere.

And the roots could well run deeper still.

The 350km is just the limit of what Juno’s microwave radiometer can sense.

This instrument tracks the warmth (hundreds of degrees Celsius) in the atmosphere associated with the storm.

But if Juno can make some gravity measurements over the region as well, it might also detect mass movements connected with the spot down at over 1,000km below the planet’s cloud tops.

Image copyrightNASA

Image caption
Juno passed directly over the Great Red Spot back in July

“We’re now putting together the 3D structure of the Great Red Spot, whereas we’ve only known it from a 2D perspective before,” said Prof Andrew Ingersoll, from the California Institute of Technology.

“Precisely how deep the roots go is still to be determined. But the warmth we see at depth is consistent with the winds we measure at the top of the atmosphere.”

Those winds move at more than 120m/second – getting on for 300mph. That is far faster than anything generally seen on Earth, including its high-altitude jet stream.

He said the Juno team wanted to understand the key mechanisms that drove the spot and kept it from dissipating.

But the data gathered on the red spot was simply not compatible with models used to study Earth’s weather.

“For practical reasons, the first efforts to understand the red spot and all the flows on Jupiter borrowed computer models from Earth science,” he said. But for this gigantic storm “we’ve got to stretch the models more than that”.

Image copyrightNASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/G.Eichstadt/J.Cowart

Image caption
One of the delights of the mission has been the way citizen scientists have interpreted its images

The team has produced a stunning visualisation of the latest data. The little film takes the viewer on a flyover of the cloud tops before a plunge into and through the heat of the spot itself.

The Juno probe arrived at the fifth planet from the Sun on 4 July last year. Since then, it has been making a close pass over the gas giant every 53 days. Its seven scientific instruments are endeavouring to reveal Jupiter’s inner workings.

The mission hopes to better explain the planet’s origins.

Its great size means it was almost certainly the first object to form in the solar system after the Sun. And that means its influence on everything around it has been immense.

It is impossible, says the mission team, to understand the other planets without first thoroughly knowing Jupiter.

Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive

It takes 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun; a “day” is 10 hours long

In composition, it resembles a star; it’s mostly hydrogen and helium

Under pressure, the hydrogen assumes a state similar to a metal

This “metallic hydrogen” could be the source of the magnetic field

Most of the visible cloud tops contain ammonia and hydrogen sulphide

Jupiter’s low-latitude “bands” play host to very strong east-west winds